Giada: Hard-Core Live Looping

Live DJs chasing a simplistic but attractive application are going to
love Giada. At the same time, Giada also covers something I've been
wanting for a year now, which is a way to trigger individual
samples from a computer keyboard simply in real time.
According to the documentation:

Giada is a free, minimal, hard-core audio tool for DJs and live
performers. Load up to 32 samples, choose to play them in single mode
(drum machine) or loop mode (sequencer), and start the show with your
computer keyboard as a controller. Giada aims to be a compact and
portable virtual device for Linux and Windows for production use and
live sets.

The Giada hard-core looping program for real-time DJ performances with a GUI that's sleekly
minimal.

Giada in its full-flight recording mode lets you layer a live performance piece
by piece.

Installation

Using Giada is pretty easy, but its ease of use comes at a price. It's
a freeware binary. This is the first freeware program I've covered,
but don't worry, I won't make a habit of it.

The project's Web site consists of a (well-designed) single page, with
download links for both the Windows and Linux versions of Giada.

As far as library requirements go, the documentation states:

Giada is based upon RtAudio and FLTK (GUI). They are both statically
linked, but the former needs libjack.so to provide JACK's features. In
a modern Linux-based OS, you should be able to run Giada without any
further installation or hack.

Regarding binaries, the manual also noted: "This software is compiled for x86 processors; we still don't know what
happens if you run it under a 64-bit OS/environment; try it and tell us
your experience."
Yes, I'm on 64-bit Linux, and it runs just fine.

Once you have the dependencies out of the way, download the latest
tarball and extract it. Personally, I found I could just open the
new folder, click on the binary, and it worked. For those wanting more
control, open a terminal in the new folder, and enter the command:

$ ./giada_lin

Usage

Once you're inside, using Giada is actually pretty easy. Although I was
rather confused at first glance, a quick bit of "RTFM" shows that its
methodology is very basic, but you need to understand a few things from
the outset.

First, this isn't for programming songs over some sort of grid, such
as the way that programs like Fruity Loops operate. Giada is for playing
live. All of your actions take place in real time, as you perform
what is essentially a live DJ set (even if it's only in your bedroom to
an audience of one). So trust me, you'll want to practice before using
it in public.

Second, Giada is designed to be run by your keyboard, and by that I mean
the thing on which you type, and not something that resembles a piano.

Before I explain the three modes of operation, let's first load
some samples so we have something to play with. In terms of
format, Giada likes only 44KHz .wav files. A good starting point
is Hydrogen's drumkits. If you have Hydrogen installed (and if
you don't, at least install the drumkits), look for .wavs under
/usr/share/hydrogen/data/drumkits. Kicks, snares and a cymbal or
two—hi-hats in particular—are the best starting point. With
these, you can
lay down a basic beat and then layer other samples over the top to make
a song.

To load these samples, click on the long and wide buttons that say,
"-- no sample --", and choose your .wav file from the file browser. Now,
if you look to the left of each sample, a keyboard character is shown;
with this, you switch samples on and off. Try pressing it now, and nothing
will play, but fear not. I discuss Giada's three running modes below,
and it all will make sense.

Oneshot mode:
this is the most basic way of operating Giada. Press a keyboard button,
and that button's sample will play. However, first you must turn on
this mode, as well as turn up this sample's volume. Starting with
the volume, the empty circle to the immediate right is actually a
volume knob. Clicking and dragging inside the circle turns up the
volume. However, unless you've pressed the Play button, there still
will be no sound; you have to enable Oneshot mode.

The next control to the right, with the small circle inside the square,
is the key to operating Giada. Click the button, and you'll have a choice
of looping modes, or Oneshot "basic", "press" and
"retrig". Choose basic,
press the key, and at last, a sound plays!

With this basic mode, you press a key and a sample plays until it's
finished—pretty basic. But, you also can interrupt the sample by pressing
the key again. With the "press" option, you have to hold down the key to
play the sample, and as soon as you release it, the sample stops. The
"retrig" option (and this is the functionality I've been chasing) plays
a sample upon pressing a key, but pressing again restarts the sample
whether or not the sample has finished. You even can keep thrashing
away at the key for instant response, which is handy for playing hi-hat notes or
ripping up a waveform.

Loop mode:
this is the second mode, and perhaps the most conventional. When Giada is
actually playing, choosing either "Loop . basic" or "Loop
. once"
plays a sample on the next bar along. In order to use this, press the
Play button near the top-left corner, then press each sample's button to
activate/deactivate it on the next bar. The "basic" option simply
keeps the sample looping until you turn it off manually; the
"once" option plays a sample until it's finished, and then starts it
again at the beginning of the next bar.

Recording mode:
this is the pièce de résistance. Basic loops can be turned on and off
willy-nilly; however, the Oneshot samples start turning this into a real
live performance. As the bar moves along each of its counts, every time
you play a note, that note is repeated every bar that follows. Using
this method, you genuinely can layer an entire song, creating new beats
on the fly. Be wary, however. Every note you play is a commitment, and
you'll be stuck with that note repeating for the rest of the song. Get
it right, and you'll have people dancing. Get it wrong, and you'll look
totally lame and ruin the party.

Nevertheless, some tools are available to help out the mere mortals among
us. The beat bar will be immediately obvious, because it's the only
moving thing on screen. Use this and its (default) four boxes to guide
your counting. Over to the right, the box that's marked
"off" is
for quantizing your music. For the uninitiated, this aligns your notes
to even places on a musical grid, removing the element of human error:
"1b" is the most severe, making each note land on a whole
count; "8b"
is the least severe, allowing you to make much more intricate music.

If you look farther right, you'll see a tempo and beat number, set to
a default BPM of 120 and a time signature of 4/4. You can turn these
up or down, allowing for strange feels, such as 7/4 @ 72 BPM
(less dance-friendly, but much more trippy).

Still, this early software does have its limitations. First, it's
freeware. In this day and age? Why? Ech! Second, there weren't any
panning controls as far as I could tell. Any stereo imaging you'll have
to do beforehand, manually.

Nevertheless, this program is incredibly cool. It allows you to output
to JACK, which makes it more powerful, and just look at
it. It's
a techno-minimalist's wet dream! Giada has an amazing economy of space
and features in its design that's quite deceptive. I actually thought
this was going to be a very short review when I started.
Giada is a must-have for any electronic musician.